My Artistic Life with Animals.
By Dominic Latham
My Childhood Days.
My love of nature is something I have carried throughout my life. From a young age I was fascinated by animals of all types and sizes, resulting in a collection of birds, fish, reptiles and poultry at home alongside the family labradors.
In my teenage years, whilst on a family safari to the plains of Tanzania in 2013, I became enchanted by the vast diversity of Africas flora and fauna, which fuelled my love of nature even further. Determined to capture these incredible creatures, I borrowed a camera from a kind uncle and aunt, with my own arriving the following Christmas to continue my newly found passion in wildlife photography.
My Year Abroad.
After finishing school in 2015, I took a year out of education, visiting Singapore, Australia, Thailand, South Africa, Namibia and, my favourite of the lot, Zimbabwe, where I volunteered for a safari ranch called Chishakwe.
I spent a lot of time out in the bush on foot with the scouts, where we would perform surveys of the flora and fauna, search for poachers’ snares and track black and white rhinos (on occasion, getting far too close!). Whenever it was possible I was capturing it all on my new camera.
With this abundance of photos, I took on the challenge of hand drawing some of them during the retreat from the midday sun. I soon found that I not only really enjoyed capturing the character of the animals by hand, but from my first elephant pencil drawing it seemed I could achieve it!
Having posted photos of my new found skill on Facebook whilst I was away, I was greeted home by a list of requests to draw pets of friends and family, with my first being a collage of farmyard animals in pencil.
Chishakwe, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe
Since beginning my relationship with Chishakwe on my year abroad, I have returned regularly for an annual painting retreat. With most of my paintings being based on my own experiences, getting out on the ground gives me priceless opportunities to collect materials to paint from, and Chishakwe gives me the opportunity to do just that. With an abundance and variety of life in a stunning environment, I am able to capture the beauty of one of the wildest places that Africa has to offer, meaning I can transfer it on to canvas to create my African scenes.
Uni and Beyond.
My interest in animals then lead me to a degree in Zoology at the University of Bristol, where I deepened my knowledge of the animal kingdom. Throughout my years at university, I continued to work on my commissions, developing my skills and experimenting with different mediums. Coming out of my degree, I knew where my interests in the natural world lay. With a love for animal behaviour, conservation, photography and art, I hoped I could incorporate them all in what was to come.
I found myself a few months later working in London for a company building hospitals in Africa. Though both interesting and rewarding, the job was not where my heart lay, and so during lockdown I began my journey to becoming an artist of domestic and wild animal portraiture, setting up a home studio with an ambition to incorporate photography and conservation (with plenty of trips to Africa) in the future.
